Tag: SEO

The Internet called, they want to know if you’re coming to pick up your property?

This isn’t exactly a new idea or concept, either of them for that matter. Many have spent countless hours/days working on and perfecting their personal brand (on-line or off) and surely the Internet has been around for some time now. The game changer, at least for the moment, is the uptick in quantity and adoption of social media sites and applications. Just like managing your personal brand offline, there are a lot of places to manage when claiming your lot in cyberspace. More sites pop up, some will shut down, others will consolidate and until the application is created to manage them all from one place, you have a lot to keep track of if you want to do it right.

I don’t claim to be the expert on this, but from a business perspective, I see the value am taking steps to be where my customers and colleagues are, to be visible and helpful in places where they hang out and am losing the notion that the telephone and physical networking events are primary sources of business communication. Since I am not the most outgoing person in the world, networking on-line is a lot more comfortable for me than mingling at public social events. On-line, I can cast a huge net with a truly valuable offering, a recognized brand (or name) and the patience and persistence to make sure the net is noticed in all of the places that my customers might be waiting. My customers do not necessarily want to be found as they are intelligent people quite capable of finding me when they need me. It is my job to make sure that I have the brightest and largest target on my back (and front) as possible.

People like buying from their friends and from people who are helpful rather than pushy. Sure, a seasoned sales rep can coerce or bully you into buying sometimes, but customers are more and more savvy, they know what they want and they know they can get it cheaper somewhere else. This is where combing your personal brand with your business brand becomes very beneficial. It takes a long time, a lot of work and plenty of patience to achieve any sort of results, but hang in there and I’m sure you will see the long term value begin to pay off. Start with what you know and offer advice. Join, follow and contribute to groups in your line of expertise. Asking questions, meeting colleagues, working together on common problems that you face in your field will help solidify the value associated with your newly established personal brand.

Personal brand: Your name can carry a lot of weight in the search engine, particularly if you have a unique name or a nickname used by all of those who know you. Mine is uncommon enough that I was able to grab up a lot of the property associated with it and begin weaving my net between these sites. Below are some examples that I’m using to pull it all together.

LinkedIn.com: Much more of a business networking site and one that has been around for a lot longer than most, LinkedIn is a good place to organize your Rolodex and to expand it through introductions made through your colleagues thereby extending your personal network. LinkedIn gives you the ability to get your Name (Brand) in the URL which will help when search engines come a-lookin’. Benjamin Sayers on LinkedIn.

BenjaminSayers.com: This blog is a good example of a brand building tool offering the most control and flexibility when it comes to customization, search engine optimization and traffic driving opportunities. It takes time to get sufficient content and traffic to the site if you are not already well known, but posting valuable information, asking and answering questions and sharing your experiences and advice will begin to pull people towards your goal.

Twitter.com: A newer medium for communication combining both personal and business updates on “what you’re doing now”. This one is fairly new to me, but has provided significant value already and has opened my eyes to a lot of useful resources I would have otherwise gone without (most likely). I’ve found and now follow a lot of people in the entrepreneurial, VoIP, technology, general business and venture capital spaces. Everyday there are some exceptional tweets with tips, tricks and URLs to content often specific to my interests. I’m found at http://twitter.com/benjaminsayers, come follow along.

Company Blog (VoIP Insiders):Though I haven’t contributed in a while, our company blog gets a lot of traffic and is a great place to help build my personal brand. Re-posting content or writing new posts on blog.voipsupply.com that links back to BenjaminSayers.com will help with search engine rankings and help associate my personal brand with our business brand which is well known and highly respected.

There are other places out there (myspace.com, twibes.com, spaces.live.com, google profiles, ning.com) and new properties are created all of the time. If you are building and managing your brand, now is the time to snap it up before someone else with your name decides to beat you to the punch. If you are looking for help building your personal or business brand on-line (of off), the people at one of my companies, Sayers Media Group, can help. Along with creating IVR, SMS, Web, VoIP and other communication applications, our marketing team is experienced and well aware of how to build an on-line brand and drive traffic to it from all angles. If you just have questions, send a tweet, comment on facebook, ask a question on linked in or comment on this post.

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Why should you care what Ben Sayers has to say?

He isn’t a well known writer, not an economist, he isn’t in politics and apparently doesn’t have much writing experience. He also isn’t that golfer from the UK.

Whether you read my content or not is entirely up to you, but I can offer this one thing. I won’t write about anything that I haven’t thought about it for a very long time, nor topics that do not affect a larger body of people than just me and those around me.

Benjamin P. Sayers is: (in no particular order other than perhaps chronologically)

A proud Canadian citizen living and working in the US since 1976 (I was three then)

The son of two very smart parent, one a Philosophy and Ethics Professor and the other a Geriatric Nurse Practitioner

A product of growing up on a Christian college in a town of 500 people, surrounded by rural New York townships

Like plenty of other Entrepreneurs, a college drop out

As such, I (Ben Sayers) am an Entrepreneur and have been since I was a child

A self-taught businessman, systems administrator and software developer, capable of learning just about anything as needed

A husband since 1997, she was my boss in 1991 and apparently still is

A father of three fantastic boys, all unique, gifted, well mannered and venturing into a promising future going wherever they choose

A budding social networker and master of my own “domain”

Among other things, I intend to write about my experiences as an entrepreneur and CEO, various political and business opinions, our Economy in the USA, vetting new ideas, talking about things that had an impact on me or my colleagues and plenty of other stuff I’m sure.

I’m not just writing this for my own pleasure and to occupy my time, I am putting these things out there because I truly want to hear what you have to say whether it is positive or negative. Tell me I’m wrong, it certainly won’t be the first time, nor the first time I have improved as a result of someone’s honesty. If you’d prefer to send an email or contact me by some other means, try bsayers -at- sayerstech.com or on LinkedIn.